


Dreaming in Colors

by technofantasia



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: (in Splinter's backstory), Anxiety, Character Study, Cute Kids, Depression, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Light Angst, Parental Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rat Dad loves his Turtle Sons okay, The Trials of Parenting, The turtles are there but mostly in the background, Turtle Tots (TMNT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25672978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technofantasia/pseuds/technofantasia
Summary: When Yoshi was young, he would dream of success.In his sleep, he would see success in his schoolwork, the pride of his parents, the love of his partner... for him, the whole world was ripe for the taking, and he was ready to savor every drop of it.He never dreamt of having children, back then.Few teenagers do.(A look at the life of one Hamato Splinter, both past and present)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Dreaming in Colors

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I have seen approximately half of the first season of TMNT 2012, but I was inspired to write this anyway! As a result, some details of Splinter's backstory may be off from canon. My excuse is that TMNT canon is kinda screwy regardless.

When Yoshi was young, he would dream of success.

Not always of success in battle, although being a member of the youngest generation of a ninja clan, there was plenty of that expectation; no, he would dream of success in its many forms. In his sleep, he would see success in his schoolwork, the pride of his parents, the love of his partner.

...Well, she wasn't his partner at the time, but that was a dream of success, too. Teenagers are as unruly as they are predictable. He was a pretty wild child in his youth, always causing trouble just underneath the veil of notice; for him, the whole world was ripe for the taking, and he was ready to savor every drop of it.

He never dreamt of having children, back then.

Few teenagers do.

—

He wakes to the sound of children's cries, as he does practically every morning nowadays. He's almost grateful for the consistency of it at this point; saves him the trouble of scrounging up the batteries for an alarm clock out of city dumpsters. Sensible people rarely dump items that valuable, he's found.

After taking a moment to decide if said cries were in laughter or pain (it was laughter, thankfully. Not all days is he so lucky), he debates whether or not he wants to get out of bed. The answer is always the same. He does the opposite.

As he drags himself out of his futon, physically feeling the four hours of sleep he'd only just had like a weight on his chest, he tries to take comfort in the routine of his new life. For all his life has changed in the past five years from the thirty-two before it, each day has felt more or less the same since he'd settled into the rhythm of it. 

Wake up far too early, prepare a meal for the boys, monitor them as they play, try and fail to sneak in some meditation and training time (he may have let himself go in many respects, but there are some parts of his old identity he refuses to relinquish), somehow get his children to settle for a nap, travel to the surface to scavenge for food and supplies, return ideally before his children wake, try to teach them a lesson for the day, prepare another meal, get the children to settle for bed, and go to sleep far too late.

He can't remember the last time he got the eight hours of sleep his parents always used to drill into him as being important for optimal performance, and that fact rankles him slightly. It's such a simple loss, and not all that meaningful; he rarely even got that much sleep _before_ everything happened, it makes no sense that it would bother him now. Now that he has so little of his old lifestyle remaining, though... every time he wakes feeling groggy and tired, he hears in his head the echoes of his father's scoldings and he still feels shame despite his years of adulthood and independence.

He moves to greet his sons for the start of their day (not morning—he cannot afford to walk the streets without the cover of darkness anymore, though he didn't exactly take advantage of that privilege before he lost it anyway), and despite himself, he can't find it in him to mind much of anything.

His life may be different now, but it's not worse.

He refuses to regret this.

—

After his daughter was born, of course, he never got the chance to dream much. He never got the chance to _sleep_ much; babies require a lot of attention, he found, and he refused to be the lump of a father and husband that wouldn't give his beloved daughter exactly what she needed.

When he was able to catch some rest, though, he dreamed of adventure.

Perhaps one could say that it's human nature to want what you don't have, and he was only human, after all. He had happiness, every day, though family life certainly wasn't always a cake walk; meanwhile, a part of him always longed for the glory of the fight, of travel and discovery, like the tales in books and stories told to him in his youth. Excitement.

Married life may be in many ways exhilarating, but it is not exciting.

So, in the day he lived a dream, and at night, he dreamed of life, flying free through mountains and valleys, visiting remote villages and bustling cities alike.

The life of a confused man, he now thinks. A man who wanted the best of both worlds and as a result reaped the benefits of neither.

Then again, he's not "only human" anymore, so perhaps he's lost that perspective.

—

One of the first big problems he ran into raising his boys was the sheer amount of _trouble_ they started getting into the second they learned how to walk unassisted.

It wasn't _the_ first, of course. That would be figuring out what kinds of foods infant mutant turtles could stomach, a problem he ran into on the very first day. While he had some amount of experience with human infants, he had had no earthly idea what the turtle equivalent of baby food was; this was, of course, on top of the trial of figuring out what he himself could eat in his new (permanent) form. And everything else about the situation, like figuring out where to live now that he couldn't talk to his landlord without giving the poor man his death of shock.

Algae and worms ended up getting put on the list by accident, after one of his new charges started getting a little hungry and decided to search for food on his own. He'd spent a panicked couple of hours making sure the child was okay before recognizing the blessing for what it was; at least now their meals would be easy to find.

It took him slightly longer to figure out what _he_ could eat, but it turned out okay, he remembers solemnly. He still feels disgusting digging through garbage for food, but again, he must recognize his blessings for what they are.

It's a mantra he repeats often.

Anyway, his boys have always had an absolutely astonishing propensity for doing exactly what he doesn't want them to do, and when they were finally old enough to move around on their own, that tendency only skyrocketed. His previous experience is of no use at all. It seems like every "under all circumstances, do _not"_ that comes out of his mouth gets lost somewhere on the way to their ears, and all they hear is a suggestion of something fun to do.

It's... trying. To say the least.

Over the years, he's had to carefully remove sharp objects from their mouths when they decided sewer trash would make a good snack, he's had to chase them away from dangerous wild animals when they explored down tunnels he'd told them not to use, he's had to bandage a countless number of injuries from burns and bruises to broken bones and cracked shells…

(He has gotten a depressingly large amount of use from a turtle health encyclopedia he found in the trash behind a library. It had pretty significant water damage, but it also had a section on everything from how to treat shell rot to how to perform turtle CPR, most of which were skills he didn't know he needed but was eventually _very_ glad he learned).

To their credit, they usually learn their lesson after once or twice experiencing it the hard way. When a stern talking-to doesn't penetrate, he'll give them a more practical lesson, and he'll pray that the bruised pride will save them from bruised bodies in the future. But the worst part of it all is simply that, despite how much he loves his sons (and he does, oh he does, more than the world and _far_ more than himself), he simply cannot trust them to take care of themselves. He doesn't know if he ever will, no matter how much trouble they learn to avoid.

The fact of the matter is that their life, from the moment they were made into what they are, was always going to be dangerous. It always will be. They will never get to experience safety the way he did as a child; the surface world will never accept them, and even at their safest, locked up in the tower of their subway station home, they will always have to work for survival in the form of food and warmth. The way he sees it, in his more dismal moments, the only thing standing between his beloved sons and the death that's been chasing them since their birth is his discipline and rules. The guiding power of his own hard lived experience.

Perhaps another parent would call him overprotective. To his sons, he calls himself reasonably cautious.

In the security of his own mind, he calls himself terrified.

—

After the fight, after the fire, after he lost everything, he didn't need to sleep. His life was already a nightmare.

Sleep never came easy, back then. Most nights he would lay awake, even after hours in darkness and every herbal remedy he knew swirling in his system, the thoughts coursing through his head too loud to allow him any rest. Too much worry about what the next day would bring, and what it wouldn't. 

Some nights, his tired body would pass out from sheer exhaustion, and he would sleep.

Those were the bad nights.

When he slept, he would dream of failure. He would see visions of his past, his own words replaying over and over like a stuck record, the moment he saw his love's life leave her body frozen in high definition. He saw his hubris place the knife against his own heart, and he watched as his actions pulled it through.

But that wasn't anything new, of course. The same visions haunted his waking hours just as well. The trouble came when his dreams would get creative.

He would see through his wife's eyes as he fought his own brother, the venom she must have heard fall out of his mouth, before reality would begin falling away. He would watch helplessly as he murdered her himself, slowly, letting her screams echo off the tiles of their shared home. He would morph into a monster, skin and bone shifting into something inhuman and _wrong_.

And then, he would think like a monster.

He could remember, in those dreams, thinking of the taste of blood, yearning for death and destruction like a drug. He would tear through his wife, his daughter, his parents, his _brother,_ and feel nothing. Not even happiness, or the thrill of power. Just... nothing.

And sometimes, in the last moments of the dream just before the horrors of his mind's creation could be dispersed by the relative safety of reality, he could feel the monster inside of him consume what little shred of his old self remained.

And he would scream.

He _was_ always his own worst enemy.

—

He hears crying, again. It's the pained kind.

Panicked, he jerks out of his meditation and jumps to his feet. After the disaster that had been breakfast that day, he had decided to try finding a dark room (something not hard to find underground), burning some incense (to cover up the rat-sense-enhanced sewer smell that is literally everywhere all the time down here), and contemplating his life.

This attempt, like most of his attempts, was rather short-lived. If he had to guess, he'd say he was out for all of fifteen minutes. A record.

"Sensei! Sensei! Come quick, it's Raph!!"

Leonardo comes bursting into his meditation chamber, looking shaken and scared, close to tears.

"What has happened, my son?!"

"It wasn' my fault!"

"...Why would I assume it was?"

His son paused in his frantic motioning for a moment and looked thoughtful, before continuing tugging on his kimono.

"Uh, I dunno, jus', jus' come quick!!"

He quickly finds his way to the source of the trouble with Leonardo guiding the way and—oh. The scene he sees in front of him is depressingly familiar.

Raphael is sitting on the ground in front of his favorite toy, a red pull-back car with a flame design on the side (when he had brought it back from a supply run, his son had practically lit up, talking about how it was "so cool!!" and immediately squirrelling it away from the others despite their cries of protest), and he's crying. Again.

He's crying because said favorite toy is on actual, literal fire.

Again.

His panic slowly recedes, and he lets himself have exactly _one_ weary sigh. He _really_ thought he'd found all the matches this time.

Recently, Donatello had begun taking extreme interest in mechanics and engineering. It started when his son found a textbook about electrical engineering that had washed up in a sewer tunnel; soon, instead of toys, he was asking his father to bring him all manner of electrical and mechanical parts when he goes on his trips to the surface. He's usually unable to find many of these parts, especially considering he rarely knows what he's being asked to find, but he tries his best regardless. He wants to support his son's new hobby however he can.

It's an odd thing, seeing his childrens' personalities develop. He knew them when they were nothing more than ordinary animals, dependent on his every whim; now, he is forced to try seeing them as people in their own right. Small people, to be sure, and with very little in the way of life experience, but people nonetheless. It's a pivotal moment of their lives, according to all the parenting guidebooks he's collected, but he's been having a surprisingly rough time with it.

This is where his parental knowledge comes to an end, he realizes with a pang. His daughter never lived long enough to develop hobbies.

Despite how young he is, at only five years old, Donatello has been getting progressively better and better at building his mechanical contraptions; while he is proud of his son for this progress, it also concerns him that he can no longer follow most of what his son attempts to do and, perhaps more importantly, what he fails at doing. And he does fail, often.

The first explosion he heard in the lair caused his heart to skip a beat.

It was one of those moments when even he, with his years of emotional management and meditative training under his belt, could find no sage words of advice to give. He had to settle for a healthy amount of yelling, punishment, and a final "do this because I say so".

Or, rather, a final "do this or you'll make your poor father's blood pressure spike and, let's not forget, we have no idea what the limits on a rat-human mutant's heart is, so you may actually give him a heart attack".

This panicked rant would probably not mean much to small mutant turtle children. He knew this but was disappointed anyway at the blank stares he got in response.

Donatello helpfully pointed out that a healthy blood pressure is 120/80, and if it ever goes above that, _that_ would be unhealthy.

He thanked his son for the information.

Since then, he had tried his hardest to rid the lair of anything that could even remotely be considered combustible, lest his devilishly crafty son find some new way to potentially hurt himself and _definitely_ give his father stress headaches. He threw out matches, lighters, nonessential lightbulbs, batteries... and yet, somehow, he always managed to miss _something,_ because the incidents never stopped.

This particular problem with his most rambunctious son crying his heart out on the floor is only the latest in a string.

(Just from a cursory glance at the damage, it already looks slightly worse than last time this particular toy ended up as collateral in a conflict. Something more than a new coat of paint would probably be necessary. Great.)

First thing's first, he blows out the small fire and kneels to pull his distressed son into a comforting hug. After some soft reassurances, Raphael is finally calm enough to talk clearly.

"D-donnie set my car on f-fire!!!" he sniffles angrily. "An'... an' he's gonna pay for it!!"

"Now, Raphael. Why would your brother want to destroy your toy?"

 _How_ did he destroy your toy is the question he _really_ wants to ask, but one thing at a time.

Raphael thinks about it for a moment before answering. "Huh... I 'unno. But he musta had some reason, 'cuz I was just playin' with it, and then it was on fire!! Only Donnie c'n make it do that."

So it was a timed combustion, or maybe even remote controlled. That doesn't bode well.

"See? I _said_ it wasn' my fault!" Leonardo says resolutely, hovering awkwardly with his arms crossed a stone's throw away.

Raphael looks at his brother, confused. "But... I never thought you did it."

"And neither did I," adds their father.

"Well, that's, that's good, 'cuz I didn't!"

"Uh... huh." Raphael narrows his eyes slightly.

Maybe they should all try getting this back on track.

"Were you hurt when it caught fire?"

"No, jus' surprised," he mumbles, rubbing his beak. "I bet Mikey put 'im up to it... I'm gonna pound his face in!!"

His children can be rather predictable at times. "Raphael, you shouldn't plan to hurt your brother, especially not when you don't know if he was actually at fault. Let's go and talk with them both and see what exactly happened here, alright?"

He nods, but his brow furrows in the way it does when he's made up his mind, usually about violence. This is going to be a fun conversation.

And it is; as it turns out, Raphael was right. After what Raphael did at breakfast, Michelangelo wanted to play a prank on his brother in revenge and enlisted Donatello's help to pull it off. Said prank apparently involved some "new invention" of his son's, so he went along with it for the sake of "scientific progress".

As Donatello is explaining this to him, Raphael starts attacking Michelangelo, and oh, he's biting again. Wonderful.

After pulling them apart, Raphael starts crying again because his toy is destroyed, and Michelangelo starts crying because his hand hurts after Raphael bit it, and Donatello starts crying because he's afraid that his father is mad at him, and he himself feels the urge to start crying because _why does this always happen?_

(He wonders, idly, where Leonardo went. Well, his son was certainly _very_ firm on his lack of involvement in this matter, so he supposes the boy's absence is... well. To be expected. Oh, the politics of childhood. He makes a note to talk to his missing son about this later.)

Deep breath. Okay. One thing at a time.

First, he reassures Donatello that he isn't angry, only concerned for their safety. He would however like to see the contraption that he used to do this, and also take it away, permanently.

(He doesn't have any illusions that this will be the one confiscation that will solve the problem forever, but hope is a powerful drug).

After hearing his son's angry grumbles of acceptance, he then turns to Michelangelo and scolds him for planning to destroy his brother's toy. Surely he didn't _mean_ to hurt Raphael, but that was what happened, and it shouldn't happen again in the future. He proceeds to give a somewhat lengthy lecture to all the young turtles in the room about the importance of respecting other peoples' personal property, especially that of family.

"Do you all understand?" he finishes.

All three nod.

"Good. Now, Michelangelo, let's go get you patched up; it should go without saying, but obviously it hasn't, so... Raphael? _No biting._ I'd really rather you didn't fight at all, but if you're going to, at least fight with dignity and not your _teeth_."

The son in question looks at the ground, frustrated, and sounds out a quiet "Hai, Sensei…"

"Also, Donatello? As you are the one that helped break it, I expect you to fix Raphael's car as much as you're able. Judging by how proud you were of your own skills earlier, I'm certain it would be no problem at all for you, correct?"

"Aw, come on!"

He practically has this by numbers at this point.

With that messiness out of the way, he takes Michelangelo over to their well used first aid kit and carefully places a band-aid over the injury before letting his son go back to playing. As punishment, he made it so that Michelangelo would need to share his own toys with Raphael while his toy car was still broken. They were both disappointed by this at the time, but seeing his son run off so happily, he can't help but feel that the two of them would end up having fun together, brotherly strife forgotten.

They _are_ very close as brothers, after all. All of them. He feels something warm swell inside him at the thought, light and hopeful.

For all his faults as a parent, maybe he's at least done _something_ right.

That night, it only takes half an hour to wrangle his children into bed and get them to settle down for a story. By the time he's halfway through, he can hear four soft snores creating a dissonant melody and he knows his day has ended, as gracefully as it ever does.

He must recognize his blessings for what they are, he reminds himself. Small blessings.

As he looks down on the turtles he bought at a pet shop one day in a desperate plea borne of loneliness to have _something_ to keep him company, _anything,_ the symbols of the life he lost and the life he has left to live, the catalysts of his transformation into a monster and a father again, his babies, his children, his _sons_ …

All he can think is, despite the fact that they are growing, they are still so small.

How small they are, his little blessings.

Smiling softly, he leaves the corner of their home designated as his sons' bedroom and moves about his own bedtime routine. He takes a bath, prepares himself a cup of tea, brushes his teeth (and files them, which is a thing he has to do, now), and readies his futon for sleep.

Before he's able to do more than think about lying down, though, he hears once more the sound of a child's cry. The sound, this time, is soft and wavering, weighed down with clear drowsiness.

"Sensei…?" Leonardo mumbles, eyes downcast, standing guiltily at the threshold of the room. He looks only half-awake (and miserable at that), but holds a determined look on his face nonetheless.

He beckons the child into the room; in response, he carefully walks over to his father, head bowed in what can only be shame. "What is it, my son? I thought you were asleep."

"I woke up," Leonardo says plainly.

He waits a moment for his son to say more, but it doesn't seem as if anything is forthcoming. Perhaps a nudge would help.

"...So you did. Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

After another beat of silence, Leonardo starts talking again, sounding this time on the verge of crying. "I... when, when Raph's car blew up, I said it wasn' my fault, but... but I was kind of _lying_..."

There it is.

"Lying? How so? Donatello and Michelangelo already admitted to being responsible for the incident."

"Well, yeah, but... I, when Donnie and Mikey were plannin' it, I walked in, so, so I knew they were gonna do some'n', but I didn' tell 'cuz they told me not to. I didn' know it was gonna blow up, though, honest!! I only knew Donnie was messin' with it, not that he was gonna set it on fire, but I shoulda told anyway! I'm sorry!!"

After finishing his confession, Leonardo finally began crying in earnest, hugging him and sobbing pitifully into his kimono. He feels his heart melt. Carefully, he kneels and returns his son's embrace, rubbing soft circles on his shell. "Shh... It's all right, my son, I'm not angry. Be still..."

Slowly, the sobs cease, and Leonardo peers up at him with a mixed look of concern and wonder. "You're... you're not mad…?" he asks, confused.

"No. I'm not mad." He strokes his son's back once more and stands up. "You came to get me the moment you knew something was wrong, which was the right thing to do. I would have preferred if you'd told me immediately, of course, but you didn't know it would be dangerous and thus had no reason to believe that was necessary. Moreover, you even decided to come here of your own accord and tell me of your involvement when you could have easily done nothing in order to escape blame. You did the right thing, Leonardo. I forgive you."

His son's face lights up.

"...But next time, please do tell me first. Safety should always come before secrecy; no matter how much your brothers want to hide something from me, if there is any chance of danger, I should know about it. Do you understand?"

His face falls again, and he nods.

"I'm really sorry, Sensei, 's just... every time Donnie makes some'n, you take it away 'cuz it's "dangerous". And, I guess it _is_ a lotta the time, but it still always makes 'im real sad. He works real hard on that stuff, even though I don' really get it, you know? Can'tcha just let him keep it, jus' this once, 's long as he promises not to blow anything up again…?"

His son scuffs his toe lightly against the ground, and he feels something deep within his soul tremble. "Absolutely not," he says outwardly, as firmly as he can manage. He sees Leonardo flinch at the sudden harshness of the tone. "Donatello should of course be able to keep his own creations, but only when he creates things that don't put himself or the rest of you in harm's way. Safety is everything, Leonardo. Your brother may be disappointed in the moment, but temporary disappointment is better than the potentially _permanent_ injury one of you might sustain should he keep that device. I appreciate your concern for your brother, but my decision is _final_."

Leonardo seems frozen in shock. Perhaps he was a bit too firm with his son, given he didn't really do anything wrong, but he needed to get his point across; he cannot allow any harm to come to his family, even (especially) by their own hand. His son is just too young to understand.

He's already lost one child too many. He will not lose another.

He expects his son to bid him good night and return to bed after recovering, a bit shaken up but none worse for wear, so he's surprised when Leonardo responds with an earnest, almost affronted cry. "B-but, Sensei... Donnie's not stupid! It's _his_ thingie, he knows how'ta use it right! He didn' hurt Raph with it, even when it woulda been real easy." His defense starts out uncertain, but he quickly gains steam. "Maybe, maybe it'd be dang'rous for _you_ to use, 'cuz you dunno how it works, an' I don' either, but _he_ does! Donnie's super smart!! If you gave him his thing back, there's _no way_ he'd let any of us get hurt by it. Trust me!"

 _Trust me._

The words strike him like a blow. He's speechless.

Leonardo seems emboldened by his own rant, and continues. "An' maybe, maybe he could even use it to hurt bad guys instead, so it'd actually be _double_ safe! You _gotta_ let him have it back, Sensei. He was _so sad_. It'll be okay, honest..."

 _Trust me_ , he said, as easy as water flowing down a river. As if he could so simply trust the promises of a helpless child. As if he could allow himself to believe that it'll be okay when he has so many years of experience telling him to fear, fear, always fear the worst, that trust is a fickle thing doomed to wither and die at the slightest provocation.

He trusted his parents. He trusted his brother. He trusted his wife. 

(But, then, that was before, wasn't it?)

He can feel himself dangling on some precipice, desperately trying to claw himself to safe, steady ground but just as desperately wanting to hit the bottom, and he finds himself unable to make the choice, to hang on or let go, to protect or to _trust…_

"...I'll consider it," is what he says to his son. The boy nearly leaps for joy, but before he can shower his father in the inevitable avalanche of gratitude, he's interrupted. "Don't celebrate too soon! Declaring premature victory is tantamount to defeat. You've brought some very good points to my attention, but I still need to make a decision. More importantly, it is far past your bedtime. I'll discuss this with Donatello in the morning; for now, go to sleep, my son."

As he looks down into the hopeful eyes he's already entrusted his very soul to, he knows he's already made up his mind. He made up his mind long ago.

(He debates whether or not he wants to take this step. The answer is always the same. He does the opposite.)

Finally, Leonardo scampers off to bed, and he is left once more with his thoughts. He takes a couple calming breaths.

Donatello's invention, indeed some kind of remote used for explosive detonation, sits in the corner of the room; he hadn't thrown it away just yet, not having had the time to do so safely. It _is_ quite an impressive device, he must admit, especially for having been made by a five-year-old; _he_ certainly can't understand how it works. He wonders what else it has the potential to do.

Maybe he'll give it back with the stipulation that he must be present whenever his son wants to use it. Or, maybe he would only be allowed to use it in a certain shielded area. Either option would certainly mitigate much of the danger, allowing his son room to flourish in his craft; that's something his parenting guidebooks always stress as being important.

The tips are sometimes quite difficult for him to follow, but he tries. His children deserve only the best upbringing he can give them and he refuses to be the lump of a father that doesn't give his beloved sons exactly what they need.

Satisfied for the moment, he turns to his still-prepared futon.

He can decide what comes next in the morning; for now, he hears the scolding voice of his father echo in his ear, he must sleep.

It occurs to him that he'd just said the exact same thing to his own son not thirty seconds earlier.

Well, he thinks with a smile, it's nice to know that some family traditions will never die.

—

Nowadays, sleep comes to him easily. It's only natural he feels so tired, of course. Children are a handful, and he _is_ a single father. Already, he can feel his eyelids heave with weight; he knows that, the second his head hits the pillow, he will be out like a light.

So, before that, he reflects.

He wonders if becoming a rat has altered his aging process in any way, because he feels much older than his thirty-seven years. He wonders what Miwa would have been like, had she lived to five years old. He wonders what his brother is doing now. He wonders how Leonardo has become so mature, despite being so young. He wonders when he'll finally be able to trust his sons to live in the world beyond this sewer. He wonders if that time will ever come. He wonders if he wants it to.

He wonders if he has ever felt more human than he does at this moment.

He decides he should go to sleep.

So, for now, Splinter's head hits the pillow, and he sleeps, and he dreams in colors more than concepts.

Maybe that's the mutagen's fault, too. Who knows.

Green, brown, black. Red, purple, orange, blue...


End file.
